Pulse of The People: A nuclear deterrent

The guest column "Nukes are not cheap" suggests that our love for money is modernizing our nuclear weapons will lead to a worldwide holocaust. Money is not the issue. The U.S. needs to maintain a deterrent in a hostile world. We only need to look at the past.

In 1945 President Truman had a slogan on his desk: "The buck stops here." World War II ended in March 1945 with Germany's surrender. Millions of our troops in the European Theater were waiting shipment to the Pacific. It was estimated that we would suffer one million casualties during the invasion of Japan. The president ordered dropping nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities resulting in a large number of casualties. Japan surrendered in August. Was this action justified?

The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 brought the world close to nuclear war. Soviet Field Commanders in Cuba were prepared to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. The threat was averted when President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev reached an agreement after recognizing the consequences of the situation.

There are eight countries including North Korea in the world today that have detonated nuclear weapons. These countries possess 4,400 active nuclear warheads and have another 19,000 total nuclear warheads stored or partially destroyed. Iran is threatening Israel with annihilation and may be the ninth country to have nuclear weapons.

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Is money or our survival the issue with regards to maintaining an inventory of nuclear weapons? The U.S. needs a nuclear deterrent and only used by a leader who can say "The buck stops here."